Cluster vS Grid

There are many differences between Grid and Clusters. The following table shows comparison of Grid and Clusters.

CHARACTERISTIC

CLUSTER

GRID

Population

Commodity Computers

Commodity and High-end computers

Ownership

Single

Multiple

Discovery

Membership Services

Centralized Index and Decentralized Info

User Management

Centralized

Decentralized

Resource management

Centralized

Distributed

Allocation/ Scheduling

Centralized

Decentralized

Inter-Operability

VIA and Proprietary

No standards being developed

Single System Image

Yes

No

Scalability

100s

1000?

Capacity

Guaranteed

Varies, but high

Throughput

Medium

High

Speed(Lat. Bandwidth)

Low, high

High, Low

A cluster is a group of computers organized together to perform the same set of functions. For instance, you may have a cluster running your database software. Or you can have a cluster running your corporate e-mail server software.

A grid is a collection of resources. A grid can be composed of multiple clusters. In Oracle’s grid world, you can have a cluster of servers running the database software and a cluster of servers running the Application Server software. Since they are all in the grid, you can move resources from one cluster to another should demands dictate.